Working offline
Trees don’t wait for a signal bar, so most of the field app keeps working without one.
The app opens without a connection
Section titled “The app opens without a connection”Because it’s installed on your phone rather than loaded fresh each time, the app itself opens with no signal at all. What you see once it’s open depends on what’s already been cached from your last connection.
Your rate card and estimates are cached
Section titled “Your rate card and estimates are cached”Your rate matrix and your existing estimates are stored on the device the last time you had a connection, so you can still look them up with no signal. A rate card doesn’t refresh itself while you’re offline, so the app shows how long it’s been since your rates last synced, and calls it out once that gets to about a week old — a nudge to reconnect before trusting a price built on stale rates, not a hard stop.
Creating and saving offline
Section titled “Creating and saving offline”You can start a brand-new walk-in estimate with no connection at all — it saves to your phone as a draft rather than to the server. Add trees, price them, save again as many times as you need; it all stays on the device until you’re back online.
Photos and video queue up
Section titled “Photos and video queue up”Capturing photos or video offline works the same way — each one queues on the device instead of uploading right away. The queue has a limit on how much it can hold at once, and you’ll see a warning once it’s getting close to full, well before it actually fills. Reconnecting and letting the queue clear is the fix.
Catching up when signal returns
Section titled “Catching up when signal returns”Once you’re back online, everything queued — draft estimates and queued photos alike — syncs on its own. If a price you saw offline turns out different once the estimate reaches the server (your rates changed in the meantime, say), the app flags that estimate for a quick review rather than quietly swapping the number on you.
The one thing that needs signal
Section titled “The one thing that needs signal”Starting a new walk-in works offline. Starting an estimate from a website lead does not — that seeding step has to fetch the lead’s details from the server, so the worklist stays disabled until you reconnect.
What to watch out for
Section titled “What to watch out for”Work one estimate on one device at a time. There’s no way for two people editing the same estimate on two different phones to merge their changes — the last one to sync wins, silently. If a job might get picked up by more than one person, agree on who’s holding it before you both start editing.